Escape to the Movies: Resident Evil: Afterlife

[Arcanist]

I don't really care what MovieBob says, I'm going to carry an irrational grudge against this movie because my local theater canceled all screenings of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World so they could put in a 3-D camera to screen this instead.

 

[ma55ter_fett]

Spoilers the "big" character reveil is

Spoiler

Jill Valentine, remember how in RE5 she had that werid spider amulet thing on her chest that messed up her boobs and made her do evil stuff? Well its back

 

[Frontastic]

So the real question: Does Wesker utter the immortal line "Complete Global Saturation"?

Sadly not. A man can dream though, a man can dream...

 

[IWCAS]

I actually love each and every one of these movies. I was SUPPOSED to see afterlife today but it looks like my friend bailed on me.

 

[Mantonio]

I haven't actually played Other M yet, though I've been meaning to.

I don't see what was wrong with the FPS Prime series though. It was great. Also the Space Pirates were actually entertaining characters, instead of faceless mooks.

 

[MovieBob]

Samus, having recently been the stoic tough-girl of the Smash Brothers sect and a lone adventurer that has saved the universe several times by this point, is drastically recharacterized to be massively dependent on the orders of a newly-introduced superior officer, into a character who starts shaking and freezing up in fear of an enemy that she had already defeated several times at this point, and who monologues endlessly, to the point that the series could have been a film noir and had less monologues overall.

Alright, I'm not necessarily looking to get way deep into this here, but FWIW...

Samus was not "stoic" in the previous Metroid games - she was ROBOTIC. There's a difference.

Stoicism is only a virtue - or a character-trait - when you can tell either by actions or by scenario that it's a conscious decision made by someone. A fully-developed human being who is demonstrably suppressing emotional reaction is stoic, but a statue is not because statues are ALWAYS like that. And, like most other video game characters originating in the 8-bit era, Samus IS essentially a statue - an empty vessel for the player to inhabit. (Hell, by this logic the most unflappably-stoic hard-ass in game history is PAC MAN - I've never even seen that dude BLINK!) And thanks to the depersonalizing effect of her species/gender-neutral armor, she's probably been the LEAST well-characterized of all the Nintendo franchise leads.

BUT, because of the magnitude of her sole genuinely unique trait - re: she's a woman but it's "not a big deal" (aka "not sexualized") - I think gamers, myself included, have been guilty of projecting things onto her that just aren't really there. She's as empty and "shallow" as every other monodimensional power-armored game hero, but because her gender is noteworthy everything else MUST be noteworthy, too. So "doesn't react visibly because they haven't bothered to give her a personality" got built up into "stoic badass" because it fit the narrative of her as the First Lady of Liberated Game Heroines.

So, naturally, when they go and give her even the most basic and narratively-appropriate set of ACTUAL character traits - Survivors Guilt, PTSD about Ridley, a borderline Electra Complex toward Adam, an inner-monologue, etc. - people freaked the hell out; because if you're going to conflate "no personality" with "stoicism" that pretty much means "personality" equals "weakness." That said, YES, the authorization thing is a clumsy device to try and shake-up the usual "wow, I found all these power-ups that coincidentally work with my equipment" routine; but beyond clumsy execution I don't read anything else into it.

I will say, also, that it's been EXTREMELY depressing to see so many people (not a majority, but enough to take note of) using the - IMO - overblown "outrage" as yet another opportunity for Western gamers to take broad cultural cheap-shots at the Japanese developers; i.e. reiterating all this vaugely-bigoted "recieved wisdom" about Japanese "misogyny," and "needing all women to be submissive children," etc. There's a real ugliness to some of the reactions to this game around the web that are just... well, ugly is really the best word for it.

 

[Master Chibi]

This film needed more Wesker.

I wanted to see more Wesker kicking ass. Sadly, there was only about 15 minutes of wesker in the entire movie.

Yeah, this would have been far more enjoyable if this had been the case.

I hope he's not dead.

 

[GoodEyeSniper]

The further I get through life, the more I realise it's a good thing to have low standards.

 

[deonte9109]

personally i thought that the evil in resident evil(the movies) was the fact that they tricked me into paying $10 for a crappy when i could have waited for the bootleg

 

[Pinguin]

Huh...guess I'm the only one that enjoyed #1 more than #2.

Nope, same here. At least the first one had atmosphere. The second was just bland, bland shooting scenes.

As for 3D: I'm with the angry crowd. It's such a waste of effort and money in my view. I wish they'd give the option for a '2D' showing in cinemas too. I think people could vote with their feet then and they'd find out really how well liked it is!

 

[Primus1985]

What the good hell do you mean Ultraviolet sucked? Hi science fiction, spectacular fights and stunts, turns a twist on a vampire tale. What the hell is wrong? Oh Equilibrium was so great, yeah its good, but UV blows it out of the water.

 

[FlameUnquenchable]

Yah, I can't be bothered to see this movie or it's other ilk RE Beyond Thunderdome. Just not going to pay money for this kind of crap. Jovavich is a decent actress when she wants to be, but her action scenes looked faked, her dialogue is forced, and they try to maker her too 'badass' and to me it doesn't work.

 

[Cosplay Horatio]

That one part in the third film when the crows were attacking and Milla's character points the flame thrower up and torches them with her psychic powers made me yell AW BULLSHIT! I'll most likely wait for the dvd release.

 

[DeathSnake]

Gotta' say Bob sometimes you slate movies i love, but you're totally right about the 3D thing. Everyone i know pretty much hates it and can't even give me a good enough reason. Simply put it works, just in most films they are using it for the incorrect purpose, and yes, in this movie it very much does work.

 

[Optimystic]

I saw this with 6 of my friends in IMAX 3D, and we had a blast. Sure the plot is a bit very flimsy and it's chock full of references instead of characters... but the action just works and the pace never lets up once it gets going. (Which admittedly takes awhile.)

And it made a killing at the box office, so I don't blame them for making another one. $70 mil in 3 days, holy hell.

 

[Crono Maniac]

Woo! Somebody on the internet actually liked Other M! THANK YOU BOB!

It seems like everyone's focusing on the bad voice acting for Samus (cause no good game in history has ever had bad voice acting) and making cries of sexism. Cause showing respect to your military commander and the closest thing you have to a father is a complete disgrace to women everywhere. And he wasn't saying it was better than Prime 1. Prime 1 may not have had the amazing camera and combat that Other M has, but it was certainly less linear and more atmospheric. And, while the rest of the Primes were also less linear, I'd still take Other M over every Prime but the first one.

I wonder if Yahtzee will actually mention the gameplay, unlike everyone else on the internet.

Oh trust me, plenty of people are bitching about the gameplay, though mostly for shallow reasons.

Oh yes, and let's not forget that Samus apparently isn't allowed to have emotions. Like no woman has ever had those

Oh yeah, I forgot about the complaints of overly-linear gameplay. Because no linear game in history (and it isn't even all that linear) has ever, ever been good. Remember Half-Life, Bioshock, God of War, Portal, nearly every Mega Man game, Castlevania, Star Fox 64, and Mario 3? God I hated those games. Pieces of crap, each and every one of them.

And emotions! God! Everyone knows that real strong women never, ever emote or obey any man, parental figure or not. And being shocked at seeing a giant dragon that ate her parents in front of her when she was four (at least according to the manga)? Totally butchered her character. I mean, silent protagonist Samus was a very well developed character, and it was physically painful to watch her hours of characterization be destroyed!

And the voice acting! Ugh! Wait, the voice acting really did suck... Crap.

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

Oh yeah, I forgot about the complaints of overly-linear gameplay. Because no linear game in history (and it isn't even all that linear) has ever, ever been good. Remember Half-Life, Bioshock, God of War, Portal, nearly every Mega Man game, Castlevania, Star Fox 64, and Mario 3? God I hated those games. Pieces of crap, each and every one of them.

And emotions! God! Everyone knows that real strong women never, ever emote or obey any man, parental figure or not. And being shocked at seeing a giant dragon that ate her parents in front of her when she was four (at least according to the manga)? Totally butchered her character. I mean, silent protagonist Samus was a very well developed character, and it was physically painful to watch her hours of characterization be destroyed!

And the voice acting! Ugh! Wait, the voice acting really did suck... Crap.

Well the linearity thing is a bit against the Metroid formula, but it's not Hamster Tube Simulator XIII levels of linear so they're fine.

I also looked at the script of Fusion recently and even that hardly had Samus speaking. Most of the dialogue was just Adam giving her orders.

 

[lightsier]

I do agree that UltraViolet was bad, it just felt rushed and the action wasn't that amazing to me. It was a mess of a movie. Sorry, 3D sucks! I hate having to wear goofy glass over top of my eye glasses personally. Also half of the damn movie to me was in slow motion!! That is not interesting!!

I also disagree that Metroid Other M is better then Metroid Prime series. Other M is like.. a reskinned Ninja Blade.

 

[Dioxide20]

Interesting, I thought the second one was way better then the first and third movies. In fact I thought that the third movie was boring and didn't really need to happen.

Differences in opinion.